The images from the Chicago Blue Line attack are the stuff of nightmares: a 26-year-old woman doused with a flammable liquid and set ablaze while riding a downtown train, screaming as the car filled with smoke and bystanders stood frozen. This was not a random scuffle or a lesser assault — federal prosecutors promptly treated it as an attack on mass transit itself and filed terrorism charges against the suspect.
Surveillance and charging documents show the suspect allegedly filled a bottle with gasoline at a gas station, boarded the train, poured the liquid on the victim and then ignited her, watching as she rolled on the floor trying to extinguish the flames before escaping to the platform. Federal and local authorities described the scene as “brutal and vicious,” and the suspect now faces the prospect of life behind bars if convicted.
Worse still, this monster was not a stranger to the criminal-justice system. Public records and reporting reveal a decades-long arrest history and recent pretrial release on electronic monitoring — a release prosecutors had opposed — exposing a staggering pattern of leniency that placed him back on the streets. That sequence of court decisions and modified electronic-monitoring hours raises obvious and damning questions about who is being protected by our current system.
Chicago’s political leadership deserves heat for reflexively minimizing the public’s fear while crime spirals in plain sight. Mayor Brandon Johnson has, in recent episodes, described certain violent episodes as “trends” rather than crises needing aggressive response, a posture that reads less like steady governance and more like wishful denial when women are being torched on public transit. The public has a right to demand leaders who call out evil, not paper it over with euphemisms.
Conservative voices — law-enforcement veterans and ordinary taxpayers alike — are rightly demanding real policy fixes: strict custody for chronic violent offenders, real accountability when judges release dangerous people, and federally coordinated security on transit lines when local systems fail. If a city cannot guarantee the basic safety of commuters, Washington must open a federal path to secure transit infrastructure and back it with resources and prosecutorial will.
This isn’t about politics as usual; it’s about common-sense safety. Put simply, repeat violent predators who repeatedly assault, threaten or terrorize the public do not belong on our streets wearing ankle bracelets and playing by the system’s loopholes. Hardworking Americans who use public transit deserve better than excuses from City Hall — they deserve justice, protection, and leaders who will fight for law and order with courage and clarity.
